Sally
Clark response to Richard Horton
http://www.sallyclark.org.uk/Lancet050701.html
Sally
Clark - 1st July 2005
It is unfortunate
that there are several factual errors and a number of half-truths
in Richard Horton's article in the July edition of The Lancet. `Meadow
should not be found guilty of serious professional misconduct'.
We are surprised that the editor of a respected professional journal
felt it appropriate to publish such partisan comments like this
at such a time, and also to appear on national radio to make further
statements along the same lines. If the editor of a national newspaper
had done the same in the middle of a criminal trial, on the day
when the defence was due to open its case, then he might well have
found himself in court for contempt for attempting to prejudice
the outcome of the proceedings. No-one should seek to prejudge,
nor to influence, the finding of the GMC's Professional Conduct
Committee, which should be allowed to reach its decision on the
evidence put before it. `Meadow's referral to the GMC should not
have taken place' Surely Mr.Horton is not suggesting that the public
should be denied the right to complain about doctors who they feel
have not behaved properly?
Rightly
or wrongly, doctors enjoy a regime of self-regulation for such complaints,
whereby the GMC acts as prosecutor, judge and jury. Although, by
its own recent poor performance, the GMC's role in this regard is
becoming increasingly questioned, we wonder whether Mr.Horton would
prefer the CHRE to take over. We do not know if Mr.Horton is aware
how incredibly difficult and time-consuming it is to persuade the
GMC to take action against a doctor. There are two separate screening
processes, and it is a very drawn out and tortuous affair, with
the result that only those complaints which two committees feel
are strong enough have a case to answer are referred to a formal
hearing. Given Professor Meadow's high profile, we are sure that
the GMC did not make the decision to hold a hearing lightly. But,
in any event, it is a matter for the GMC, not for The Lancet.
Indeed,
complaints made by dozens of other innocent parents against Meadow
have been rejected by the GMC. Many of these parents feel that,
far from the GMC conducting a "misconceived pursuit" of
Meadow, the GMC has protected him for far too long, that this hearing
is many years overdue and should not have been limited in the way
in which it has been.
`It
threatens the effective delivery of child protection services in
Britain'
Despite
the recent scaremongering from the RCPCH, no doctor who is a genuine
expert in his field, who gives honest and impartial evidence, and
complies with his duties to the court as an expert witness, has
anything to fear. Is Mr.Horton suggesting that those doctors who
attempt to pervert the judicial system of child protection should
not be held to account? Are incompetent/biased doctors more important
than innocent bereaved parents and their surviving children, some
of whom who have been improperly adopted away from loving parents
on the basis of false medical evidence? That, in itself, is a form
of child abuse.
'Meadow
is a scapegoat'
Two other
doctors who gave false evidence in our case have already been found
guilty of serious professional misconduct by the GMC. Martin Bell
OBE's complaint against another was "screened out" by
the GMC, because that doctor "apologised" for his serious
errors. The Police Complaints Authority investigated the DI in charge
of our case, but was unable to reach a conclusion because (a) doctors
would not co- operate with them and (b) the DI resigned from the
Force (subsequently to be re-employed in a "civilian capacity").
The Bar Council charged the prosecuting counsel in our case with
serious professional misconduct, but McKinnon J upheld his application
to have the charges struck out. We still await the judge's reasons
for that decision. It is simply now Professor Meadow's turn to answer
to his professional body for the consequences of his actions.
`Meadow
simply reported a sentence from the draft CESDI Report sent to him
by a colleague'
Even Mr.Horton
acknowledges that Meadow did far more than this. In his evidence
at trial, he went on to embellish the "1 in 73 million",
with his Grand National and National Lottery analogies. He also
made a further statement that 2 Sudden Infant Deaths only occur
in the same family once every 100 years, but failed to disclose
to the court data contained in the Report which stated that there
had been 5 double SIDs in the same family in the 3 years during
which the Report had been conducted, in the Bristol area alone.
In addition, despite knowingly full well that, having given his
"statistical" evidence, he should not use it to imply
guilt, he then stated on oath that he believed that our babies died
unnatural deaths.
`Sally's
legal team did not challenge Meadow's error'
They were
not given proper opportunity to do so. The "1 in 73 million"
was bounced on them by Meadow only 3 working days before the trial
started, when there was a deluge of other matters to be dealt with
-- not least the radical changes to the way in which the prosecution
had been forced to bring their case after the collapse of their
original charge that Harry had been shaken. The trial could not
be delayed further to find statisticians to give evidence, due to
the pressure from the concurrent Family court proceedings into the
future of our surviving child. The defence team did challenge the
validity of the statistic, however, by calling another co-author
of the CESDI Report to give evidence which put it in context, but
the prosecution dismissed him as not being a statistician. In any
event, Mr.Horton misses the point -- as an expert witness, Meadow
should not have given evidence outside his expertise in the first
place, he should not have embellished it and he should have disclosed
the counter-evidence of which he was aware.
`Meadow
carefully examined the evidence relating to the deaths'
As far as
we are aware, all he did was read the original post mortem reports
(now found to have been incompetently carried out by the pathologist).
He did not meet any of the family, nor did he interview any of the
medical professionals (midwives, nurses, doctors and nanny) responsible
for the care of our babies. `He gave his opinion that the babies
were unlikely to have died natural deaths and presented supporting
evidence' When our legal team asked Meadow to produce the data supporting
his evidence, he eventually said that he was unable to do so because
he secretary had "shredded it", thus preventing the defence
and his colleagues from challenging his conclusions.`He capitulated
to lawerly pressure and his use of imaginative language (Grand National)
was made in good faith' If Mr.Horton has ever seen Meadow give evidence,
he will know that he is the least likely of 'experts' to capitulate
to lawyers. Indeed, in his book "The ABC of Child Abuse"
he advises doctors how to resist pressure from barristers. Thus,
we are not so convinced as Mr.Horton of Meadow's motives in embellishing
the false statistics, and in failing to disclose the counter statistics,
at a time when the prosecution's medical evidence had either collapsed
or been brought into serious question.
Initial
pathology findings
We find
it deeply distressing that Mr.Horton lists various of the initial
findings by Dr.Williams, the pathologist, when he should know that
virtually all of those findings were proved to have been either
non- existent or misinterpreted/caused by Dr.Williams. Indeed, Mr.Horton
knows that Dr.Williams was found guilty last month of serious professional
misconduct for, among other things, the incompetence of his post
mortems, which cannot be relied upon. It is a tactic which has been
adopted in the past by Meadow, himself, and other of his supporters,
but it is unworthy of an editor of The Lancet. The continued recital
of mistruths about our family and the deaths of our babies seems
never-ending, it hinders Sally's recovery from the miscarriage of
justice she suffered and increases the amount of the likely compensation
which will be paid to her by the long-suffering British taxpayer.
The
trial judge warned the jury against statistics
Mr.Horton's
quote of the judge's summing up is selective, in that Judge Harrison
also told the jury that the "1 in 73 million" was something
they could take into account when reaching their verdict.
First
appeal
We are incensed
that Mr.Horton quotes extensively from the judgment of the first
appeal, when he must know that it was overturned by the second court
of appeal. This tactic has been used by a number of other apologists
for Meadow's behaviour, and is as distressing to our family as it
is ill-founded.
Second
appeal
It is misleading
for Mr.Horton to say that the false statistics were of "marginal
importance" at the second appeal. The court said that they
did not have to decide the matter, because the non- disclosure of
microbiology was enough. But they went on to say that, if they had
been asked to decide, then they would have found that the misuse
of statistics by Meadow would have been sufficient on its own to
uphold the appeal. Also, we wonder on what basis Mr.Horton feels
that the appeal court had "noticeably weak grounds" for
holding that the false statistics may have had a major effect on
the jury. All independent professionals to whom we have spoken who
attended the trial have told us that, in their view, it was the
single most important piece of evidence in the whole 5 weeks. Indeed,
it has been reported to us that a jury member indicated to a friend
afterwards that it was what had swayed the majority into guilty
verdicts.
`The
crucial error was legal not medical'
Whilst we
do not contend that the lawyers (prosecution and defence) were without
fault, they did not, and could not, put words into the mouth of
such a supposedly eminent expert as Meadow. It was his decision
to introduce evidence as to the rarirty of multiple SIDs, and his
decision to quote selectively from the CESDI report into SIDs, when
he knew that at no time had we ever claimed that our babies deaths
were SIDs. It is clear that Mr.Horton is aware of this, yet he fails
to question Meadow's motives for doing so. Indeed, he seems to think
that Meadow acted "in good faith", whilst failing to consider
that the context of Meadow giving (and embellishing) such evidence
was the collapse of the prosecution's medical case, and the absence
of any evidence other than the fact that Sally was a caring, loving
mother. Mr.Horton also fails to acknowledge that, even after the
"1 in 73 million" was exposed as being false, Meadow continued
to choose to appear in court as a prosecution witness, to give evidence
as to the rarity of multiple SIDs in one family- R v. Cannings and
R v.Patel. We struggle to see how this can be described as a legal
error.
`Meadow
in good faith tried his best to assist the court'
By shredding
the data underlying his evidence, by embellishing the false statistics
and by failing to disclose data which showed that they were false?
-- we do not agree with Mr,Horton on this point. The causes of death
of Sally's two sons remains unascertained. We are deeply frustrated
and concerned that the editor of such a respected professional journal
can be so ill-informed. No fewer than 12 leading national and international
medical experts gave sworn evidence for the second appeal, with
varying degrees of certainty but all to the effect that Harry died
from some form of bacterial meningitis. The pathology undertaken
on Christopher was so incompetent that we will never know, but a
number of experts believe that he may have died from a disease/infection.
`The GMC
cannot be the place to arbitrate on complex and contingent aspects
of medicine's intersection with the law.' Nor can a court of law,
yet Meadow and other doctors choose to try to use the courts to
do just that. They only have themselves to blame if they are eventually
caught out in misleading statements or even falsehoods. Rightly
or wrongly, the GMC has been empowered by Parliament as a quasi-
judicial body to conduct a hearing into complaints against doctors.
Proceedings are run along the lines of a criminal trial. If doctors
do not like appearing in such proceedings, then we can assure Mr.Horton
that neither do innocent, bereaved parents who have been falsely
accused by doctors - we risk losing our children and our liberty,
doctors only risk losing their reputations; and they are well paid
for doing so. May we remind Mr.Horton that Sally spent three and
a half years incarcerated in prison, separated from her husband
and surviving child, purely as a result of incorrect evidence given
by doctors, not lawyers.
`Facts and
fairness demand that Meadow be found not guilty of serious professional
misconduct'
Many around
the world who have suffered at the hands of Meadow and his followers
would fundamentally disagree with Mr.Horton. But, unlike Mr.Horton,
we do not propose to try to influence the current GMC proceedings
and, after all this time, are content to await their considered
judgment.
Expert
witnesses suspect science and dead babies 27th June 2005
